We can return a pointer to the base address(address of first element of array) of array from a function like any basic data type. However, C programming language does not allow to return whole array from a function.
We should not return base pointer of a local array declared inside a function because as soon as control returns from a function all local variables gets destroyed. If we want to return a local array then we should declare it as a static variable so that it retains it's value after function call.
int* getScoreList();
Above function returns the base address of an integer array.
C Program to Return an Array from a Function
#include <stdio.h>
/* This function returns an array of N even numbers */
int* getEvenNumbers(int N){
/* Declaration of a static local integer array */
static int evenNumberArray[100];
int i, even = 2;
for(i=0; i<N; i++){
evenNumberArray[i] = even;
even += 2;
}
/* Returning base address of evenNumberArray array*/
return evenNumberArray;
}
int main(){
int *array, counter;
array = getEvenNumbers(10);
printf("Even Numbers\n");
for(counter=0; counter<10; counter++){
printf("%d\n", array[counter]);
}
return 0;
}
Output
Even Numbers 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20